Software-defined networking (SDN) describes computer networking that allows network administrators to manage network services through abstraction of higher-level functionality by decoupling systems that make decisions regarding where network traffic is sent from the underlying systems that forward network traffic to the selected destination. For example, the control plane may reside centrally, while the forwarding components may remain distributed.
Network function virtualization (NFV) is a network architecture concept that uses virtualization technologies to virtualize entire classes of network node functions into building blocks that may be connected, or chained together, to create communication services. An NFV may consist of one or more virtual machines running in different software and processes, on top of standard high-volume servers, switches, storage and/or cloud computing infrastructure, instead of having custom hardware appliances for each network function.
There may be inherent benefits in leveraging SDN concepts to implement and manage and NFV infrastructure, particularly when looking at the management and orchestration of a virtualized network function (VNF). With the rapid growth in popularity and deployment of SDN/NFV in data centers, provisioning network and deploying VNF's has become less time-consuming as well as less costly. In the context of a cloud-based software defined data center (SDDC) cloud providers may delegate creation and management service chains to tenants which suits their needs.
While traditional physical computer networks may include service chains consisting of physical network functions may include ways of detecting service chain faults, such detection may be more difficult if a service chain consists of ordered sets of VNF's. For example, current NFV orchestrator and controller solutions may be unable to detect faults in service chains. In this manner, fault detection of service chains may be delegated to a management layer, which may provide proprietary and specific resolutions.